Besançon (FR)

How can the site contribute to the productive city?

With 8,700 students, 500 researchers and more than 4,000 employees, the campus of Bouloie and the TEMIS technology park are two centres dedicated to scientific and technological production, complementary but relatively impervious. Backed onto the ring road and near an industrial zone, they are separated from the city centre by a heterogeneous fabric of bits of suburbia and residential pockets, sports facilities and activities scattered along the rail tracks. The site raises the question of spatial interactions and new mixed-uses to link mono-functional entities, hybridize the urban models, combining urban and architectural forms. There is a need to develop places of sharing and production that combine housing, artisan workshops, local services, shops and agriculture in order to open up the campuses, bringing the city into the university and diversifying areas of related activities.

City strategy

Confronted with the isolation of these major centres, the city and metropolitan area are pursuing three objectives: increase public transport with the creation of a new segregated-lane bus line; working with UFC to reorganize and consolidate the university living areas; develop interfaces and connections between the campus and the technology park; diversify uses to create a greater permeability between the city and the university at the interior and on the fringes of the campus. The opening in 2017 of a new segregated-lane public transport connection (TCSP-Viotte-Campus-Temis) is a initial guiding thread to rethinking these spatial and programmatic interactions, centring activities within the urban fabric and giving an attractiveness to the university. A project to create a garden of knowledge and discovery at the heart of the campus (current botanical gardens) is part of this approach.

Site definition 

The study site presents strong landscape qualities (woodlands, parks, open spaces). The natural topography is, however, marked by physical breaks and a distended cityscape that is fragmented and difficult to read: university buildings, student residences, businesses located on the technology park, scattered dwellings, neighbourhoods under renovation (Montrapon). The site is perceived by students, researchers, employees and residents as symbolic and physically isolated from the rest of the city. Forward-looking strategic responses on this scale are expected.
The project sites are the result of a search for available land but are not exhaustive. Europan teams have the opportunity to update the list, especially along the ring road and boulevards with a scenario to upgrade the facades.

How is Production Considered in the Urban Diversity Program?

Productive interfaces between the city, university, technological park and industrial zone: on the scale of the study site, a logical passage of several juxtaposed urban models of hybridization should reveal land opportunities for the reintroduction of local, cultural and social production.
Supportive and productive students and inhabitants: question students’ lifestyles and housing, their ability to participate in the production of their own environment, the potential to introduce new uses likely to attract other public outside university time. How to link resources belonging to student life and those from the urban environment so as to diversify the activities involved?
Refocusing of activities around a public transport line: in recent decades public transport has been a tool of requalification and development of public space. The new segregated-lane bus line Viotte - Campus - Temis can be considered as a tool for enhancing and repositioning a fabric of small businesses along the street.
Facades and productive edges, around and together with large infrastructures: the site is delimited and crossed by several major axes of metropolitan Besançon with discontinuous facades often of little quality (North Ring Road, Churchill Boulevard, Avenue des Montboucons, Avenue de Montrapon, Route de Gray). Europan is an opportunity to give once again to these axes, beyond their sole function of circulation, quality and productive functions.